Anthony Geraci And The Boston Blues All-Stars – Fifty Shades Of Blue

Surely Anthony Geraci was born to play the blues, and to improvise so wickedly that he masters any style of blues. When he was four-years-old, Geraci told his parents he needed a piano; they bought him an old upright, but he soon was pounding it out on a baby grand. At the same time he was taking lessons at the Neighborhood School of Music in his hometown of New Haven, Connecticut, he was skittering over the ivories, improvising and following his own sharp musical instincts. Although his formal musical education came in the studios of Boston’s Berklee College of Music, his real schooling came when he and his friend, guitarist Ed Cherry, listened after school to blues records of artists such as Muddy Waters, Buddy Guy, and Jimmy Rogers. Over the years, Geraci has recorded with Muddy Waters, Big Joe Turner, Otis Rush, Big Mama Thorton, Hubert Sumlin, and Jimmy Rogers, among others. A founding member of Ronnie Earl and the Broadcasters, he’s also a founding member of Sugar Ray and the Bluetones. READ MORE

Far from being a cryptic note scribbled by a tarot card reader, A.C. Forehand was the husband and musical partner of Blind Mamie Forehand. She certainly surpasses him in both the weird-name department and musical fervor, sometimes drowning the poor man's anxious guitar strumming out completely with the sound of her hard banging antique cymbals. The two were street performers in Memphis, amongst the earliest recorded in the genre or classification of street-corner and storefront gospel music. The duo cut only a few titles in the late '20s, but the songs have become treasured documentation of early American primitive gospel, released time and time again on various early blues and gospel anthologies, attracting particular attention to the Forehand legacy when included on a collection assembled by John Fahey's Revenant label. After American Primitive, Vol. 1 …